Charles Pellegrino
Charles Pellegrino might best be described as a scientist-adventurer-writer.
His theories served as the scientific basis for the novel and film Jurassic Park.
He is the author of at least 11 books including Return to Sodom and Gomorrah,
Unearthing Atlantis, and Her Name, Titanic.
Charles Pellegrino co-designed the Valkyrie antimatter rocket, is a brainstorming
team member on self replicating robot technology achieved by artificial intelligence,
and co-discovered an entirely new life form found hanging from every inch of the Titanic's hull.

One could draw parallels between this story and The Stand,
Mad Max, Jurassic Park, or those asteroid-impact movies.
But really, it's not nearly so upbeat. The worst-case scenarios in any of
those books is far more upbeat than the best possible outcome in Charles
Pellegrino's Dust. This is one of the scariest things I've
ever read. I found myself missing bus stops as civilizations ended and
humanity lost its place at the top of the food chain. I walked through an
ethnic market in Toronto listening not to the blare of music from stores or
the gabble of a score of languages, but to the chirping of birds in high
branches. I felt relieved that I lived in a world where the birds had not
died.

The premise of Dust is chillingly plausible. The
story opens with a prologue set almost 66 million years ago, with a
pre-sentient saurian facing a disaster far worse than a mere asteroid.
Paleontological evidence suggests that every 33 million years (give or take
a couple of hundred thousand), a pattern of genetic timers cause some key
species of insects, like aphids and fungus gnats, to die off in a mass
extinction. Within months, the ants die. Then bees, termites, grasshoppers;
after that, birds, most mammals, cultivated plant species, and well, then
things start to become unpleasant very quickly. The last time this happened
was about 33 million years ago, at the end of the Eocene Age. From this
book I learned about prey-switching, prions, disease vector-switching, and
other catalysts of ecological change.

This book describes a lot of bizarre and nasty ways to die.
Micro-arachnid mites, normally harmless bits of nothing that quietly inhabit
every bed and laundry hamper, mutate into a horrible black swarm that eats
everything in a Long Island suburb. Caribbean vampire bats, deprived of
their usual prey, switch to a hardier species, which happens to be bipedal.
Dinoflaggelate "red tides" poison the food chain of seaside environments.
Crop-eating fungal blooms wipe out agriculture in southern Asia and the
American plains. Small communities go "radio silent", and then small
countries. And there are purely human threats, such as war, chaos, mob
rule. The book makes an interesting statement about right-wing broadcast
demagogues who talk about "Christian values" for the most cynical and
opportunistic reasons. And, of course, some sparks of nuclear warfare flare
up, not really that important in the grand scheme, but they provide some
dramatic tension for the plot at a couple of points. Governments race to
seize any scrap of land they think might be spared the apocalypse, but that
becomes irrelevant as organized societies collapse and urban populations
die off.

Charles Pellegrino indulges himself at several points, but this is easy to
forgive. The primary character is a paleo-biologist, and the heroes are
scientists struggling against time and the purveyors of ignorance and fear
to find the answers that will save humanity. There are pages and pages of
exposition, occasionally leavened by character interaction, but more often
the reader is dragged along by ghastly potentialities described quite
matter-of-factly. Usually, the worst outcome becomes real a couple of
chapters later. The story is not based on a string of unlikely
coincidences; as millions die and ecosystems collapse, the reader is
hard-pressed to find reasons why this wouldn't happen. Human civilization
has changed the balance just enough that this time, multi-cellular life
forms might not bounce back. A "Reality Check" afterword
documents the author's research, challenging the reader to find faults in
his logic. Pellegrino himself is a paleontologist, rocket systems designer,
and undersea explorer who came up with the notion of extracting dinosaur
DNA from amber-trapped mosquitoes and who was consulted by James Cameron on
the factual details of the Titanic sinking.

A good piece of science fiction makes the reader think. This story
spun around my head for days, making me look at everything around me in a
different light. Environmentalism seems like a really good idea after
reading the book. Although this particular disaster is mostly natural, it
takes little imagination to picture mass extinctions caused by pollution or
other effects of human civilization. The space program also appears to be
an excellent long-term bet, with Earth looking like a very shaky basket to
store all humanity's eggs in. The combination of rigorous scientific logic
and gripping dramatic pacing makes this an excellent candidate for a Hugo
nomination next year. The theme of this book is that life is the universe's
way of organizing itself to combat entropy; here, though, entropy might
win. But what really makes the book work is the way it involves the reader
directly; you have to think what you would do in a world where everyone is
likely to die very soon. Read Dust. While you still can.

Alexander von Thorn works two jobs, at The Worldhouse (Toronto's oldest game
store) and in the network control centre of UUNET Canada. In his spare
time, he is active in several fan and community organizations, including
the Toronto in 2003 Worldcon bid. He is also a game designer,
novelist-in-training (with the Ink*Specs, the Downsview speculative fiction
writing circle), feeder of one dog and two cats, and avid watcher of bad
television. He rarely sleeps.